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Flare	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21800 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Fourteen—Options

            “How are you feeling, mate?”

            Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Ron reaching out to clap him on the shoulder, and then stopping and staring at the wings. He probably thought a clap would hurt the bloody things now. With a snort, Harry turned and extended his hand to his best friend. “I have a few options,” he said. “Malfoy thinks that he might be able to come up with a potion that lets me retract the wings.”

            Ron smiled at him, but there was a sharp line bending down to his mouth. “But not get rid of them?”

            Harry grimaced and shook his head, sitting down behind his desk. He’d been practicing most of the weekend, and now his wings would stay still when he commanded them to, as long as he was concentrating on them. That way, they didn’t flap in an excited flurry and send paper blowing all over the surface of his desk. “No. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much that can do that. The bloody things are wound into my magical core.”

            Ron nodded. “Well, as long as you’re not unhappy about them, mate, then I don’t have any reason to be.”

            Harry thought for a few seconds, staring at the far wall of the office. The stacks of paperwork in the way made that a little difficult, but he had deliberately decided not to worry about those for now. They had ended the threat of Hyperion Rosier, the other cases could go hang. “It’s weird,” he said at last. “I’ve talked with Malfoy, and he’s convinced me that they’re not going anywhere. I still don’t like them. I don’t like the way they take up room and make me walk and hang around my back and won’t let me lie down.” If the retraction potion worked, the one thing he most looked forward to was getting a good night’s sleep in the old, normal way. “But if I can put them in their pouches and keep them that way, then—it’s like growing out my fringe to hide my scar, I reckon. Not something I like, but something I can live with.”

            Ron stayed silent. Harry looked up and found that his friend was studying him in the close way he used when he thought Harry was hiding a wound after a fight with a Dark wizard. Harry squirmed. Of course, he had nothing to feel guilty about now, but the plain fact was, when Ron looked at him like that, it was because he was indeed hiding a wound, most of the time.

            “What?” Harry asked finally, since Ron hadn’t made it clear what he disapproved of.

            Ron sighed. “I just wish that it hadn’t happened, mate. You deserve the normal life you want, after everything you’ve done for the wizarding world. Is that so much to ask?”

            Harry huffed out a laugh. “If I see Rosier when I die, then I’m going to shake him by the shoulders and ask him that.”

            Ron finally smiled. “Yeah, I’m sure that he has the same ambitions as all the rest of us,” he muttered, and reached down for a file on his own desk. “As long as you think that you can be okay, Harry.”

            Harry nodded. He wouldn’t ever be exactly happy with the wings, he didn’t think, not ecstatic the way that Malfoy wanted him to be, and he wouldn’t ever despise them as much as he had on the first day, when he had thought they were a temporary burden that he was just too stupid to figure out how to get rid of on his own. But a happy medium—that, he could probably find and live with.

            And he had lived through harder things. He’d overcome most of his scars of the war, not all of them. He’d learned to live with most of the consequences of his fame, not all of them. He got a bit more battered and chipped each year as he went through life.

            But that was preferable to the alternative where he was perfectly preserved because he wasn’t moving anymore.

*

            “Yes?” Healer Redusson looked up from her own piles of paper on the desk in front of her, although her eyes widened when she saw Harry standing in the doorway of her office. Harry saw the moment when she twitched, trying to decide if she should reach for her wand or clear room in her treatment schedule for him, and then she swallowed and nodded. “Auror Potter. What can I do for you?”

            “I wanted to apologize,” Harry said.

            Redusson blinked several times. Harry hoped that was because she didn’t get apologized to often by men with phoenix wings on their shoulders, not because she had never expected an apology from him. “For what?” she finally asked.

            “For burning your mediwizard,” Harry said, staring himself then. He had thought that would be obvious. Just getting upset while she was treating him didn’t rate an apology. “I hope he’s all right.”

            To his surprise, Redusson smiled at him. “You mean Joseph? He was standing too close, and he ought to have known that we were dealing with dangerous, unpredictable magic, because no one knew enough about the wings at the time. He will deal with far more dangerous afflictions in the future, and this was the perfect arena for him to learn caution in.”

            Harry gave her a bemused smile in return. Well, if she was all right with it, then he reckoned he would have to be, as well. “But I didn’t singe all his hair off or blind him or anything like that?”

            Redusson shook her head. “He lost his eyebrows and a few eyelashes. He was too vain in any case. He can also learn humility this way. Two valuable lessons at the same time.”

            Harry smiled at her in bewilderment, exchanged a few more pleasantries, and left, feeling his wings ruffle and stand upright, with individual feathers curving around as if to stroke his face. Well, that was strange. It was the thing he had felt most bad about doing since he had the wings. It was unfair and out of the blue and directed at someone who hadn’t hurt him. But perhaps he didn’t have to feed his endless guilt complex after all.

            “Harry.”

            So of course, just when he was feeling that he might be able to think differently about himself, the embodiment of doing so popped up behind him. Harry turned around with a wary little nod. “Malfoy.” He watched as Malfoy’s eyes went to his wings, and then to his face. His stomach squirmed. Well, if he can invent the retraction potion he talks about, then we’ll be able to see whether he actually likes me for more than them. Malfoy said he did, and Harry had more reason to trust him than to trust most people right now, but he watched Malfoy’s eyes as well as listening to his words, and they always darted to his wings first.

            “I have the first test potion almost done,” Malfoy said. “But I need a feather, if you don’t mind providing one.” He reached out and let his fingers run along the nearest edge of the left wing. Harry shifted away before he thought about it, wrapping the wing protectively in towards his body.

            Malfoy smiled at him instead of getting upset, the way Harry had reckoned he would. “I promise, I can pluck it in a way that will make it not hurt,” he said, and reached out again, this time holding his hand beneath the wing the way that he would try to catch a drop of falling water. “Will you let me?”

            Harry watched him for a second, but this time Malfoy was looking him in the face, and his smile was at least as reassuring as Healer Redusson’s. Harry nodded reluctantly, and splayed the wing out so that Malfoy could take what feather he wanted. He had no idea how Malfoy was going to choose between the different colors and sizes and positions, anyway.

            Malfoy’s hand lingered, but since he didn’t make Harry squirm with pleasure in the middle of the corridor, that was okay. In fact, this time his touch felt different again, filling Harry with a warmth that was like standing next to the huge fire in Malfoy’s flat. He half-closed his eyes and let his head droop for a second.

            “Thank you.”

            Sure enough, Malfoy had plucked the feather without causing him pain. Harry jerked his head back up, blinking, and found Malfoy staring at him as if to say he was thanking Harry for the way he’d let his head droop like a defenseless idiot, not for the feather. Harry flushed and nodded back, wrapping the wings in again to fold them. “Sure. When should I come by and test the potion?”

            “That won’t be necessary for a few days.” Malfoy reached out, letting his hand hover as though he didn’t know what to touch now that Harry had the wings folded. “But I would like to see you before then. This evening?”

            Harry studied him for long enough that Malfoy frowned at him, and then he shook his head. “Is this because you want to, or because it’s needed for the potion, or for some other reason?” he asked.

            “Must you constantly force me to honesty?” Malfoy’s eyes had a fierce light behind them that Harry admired, but also didn’t intend to let excuse him from telling the truth. “I am—unused to this with anyone else.”

            “I know,” Harry said. “And someday, when I trust you more, that won’t have to happen.” He left out whether Malfoy could trust him more in the future, because so far, Malfoy always seemed to have assumed Harry was telling the truth. “But for now, I want to know which it is. I know how you think of the wings, and how you think of me. I don’t know more than that.”

            Malfoy narrowed his eyes as though he was facing into a strong wind. “What more is there to know than that?”

            “Whether you like me,” Harry said. “Whether there are things about me for you to like besides the way I challenge you and my wings and maybe the way I fuck.”

            Malfoy blinked. “I could ask you the same about me.”

            “And that’s the reason I’m asking you this question,” Harry said. “To help me determine that.”

            Malfoy at least looked at him differently now. He nodded slowly, as though Harry’s words had acquired an actual meaning, and then said, “I can only repeat what I said before. I’d like to see you. This evening?”

            Harry smiled at him. “Your flat, or your office?”

*

            This time, the fire was blazing away at a less overwhelming rate when Harry arrived at Malfoy’s flat. He stopped inside the doorway, pulling in and hunching his wings as usual, and looking around. “Malfoy?” he called.

            “A moment. Make yourself at home.”

            Harry snorted a little and drifted towards the fireplace. None of the chairs in front of it were the kind he could sit in comfortably, still. He thought about drawing his wand and making them so, but Malfoy might not appreciate unwanted Transfigurations in his home. Harry stood instead, watching the fire and the doorways out of the corner of his eye.

            The wings insisted on intruding themselves, of course, quivering around and floating up and down like the wings of a particularly large and stubborn butterfly. Harry rolled his eyes with a small snort. If they wanted to do that, fine. He wasn’t going to bind them again, not as long as there was the chance that he could control them better with a potion, but he still disliked the way they betrayed his emotions.

            He wasn’t sure this was the best idea. He still didn’t know why Malfoy had invited him over, but his thoughts wavered back and forth between poisoning him in an attempt to get all the feathers at once and chaining him to the bed.

            The second scenario was definitely the better idea for him, but he wasn’t sure that it should have been.

            Then Harry shrugged. He had slept with Malfoy to get rid of stress and because Malfoy had been the first one who didn’t seem entirely put out and uncomfortable with the wings, including Harry himself. It had been a mistake, probably, but it hadn’t really hurt him. And if it had hurt Malfoy, then he had chosen to come back and combat the pain.

            If they fucked again, Harry might be able to determine whether it would ever be more than a mistake, or only that.

            He turned around when Malfoy came into the room, and blinked. Malfoy was carrying a tray with two large goblets on it. Harry could smell the pungent drink inside them from here, and he sniffed in delight, although the scent wasn’t familiar. It was thick and sweet, like boiled sugarcane. He reached out and took a cup from the tray without thought.

            “You trust me that much?” Malfoy’s voice was low and seemed to wind through the room, as present and prevalent as the crackle of the fire or the smell of the drinks.

            “Yes, enough for this,” Harry said. “Besides, Ron knows where I am again. You’ll have to explain yourself if I fail to show up.” He sipped the drink. As sweet as it smelled, but not overwhelmingly so. He closed his eyes and sighed, and felt the wings mantle a little, off his back, reflecting his pleasure.

            “I wanted to speak to you,” Malfoy said. “About ordinary things. Quidditch, and what teams you favor. How you like your job. Who the most annoying people are whom you encounter in your daily life.”

            Harry blinked his eyes open and studied him. Then he grinned. There was something absurdly cute about Malfoy standing there, still holding the tray, and caught somewhere between being a good host and an awkward welcome. “I think you already know the answer to the last one, don’t you?” he asked, and sipped again.

            Malfoy seemed to relax, maybe because of the snipe. “Then tell me how I can move out of that category,” he suggested, picking up his own cup.

            “Talk to me about you,” Harry said. “And don’t look at the wings so much.” Malfoy guiltily snapped his gaze away from them again. And something else, but I can’t tell you without prejudicing you, not until the potion is finished. “But mostly the first one. I know how you feel about me in the years since the war, but not much else.”

            Malfoy blinked, then smiled at him. The smile was slow and explorative and made Harry’s mouth dry out, which was probably the best sign he’d had so far. He nodded and sat down in the nearest chair. “Maybe this will work,” he whispered—also a good sign, because that meant he had doubts like Harry did, instead of just being inhumanly certain and correct all the time. “Won’t you sit down?”

            Harry cleared his throat and cast a glance between the wings and the high chair-back in front of him. “I didn’t know if you’d want me to change it,” he explained, when Malfoy just went on looking blank. Maybe he expected so much rudeness of Harry that he thought he’d just draw his wand and cast without permission.

            And let’s face it, a week ago, I probably would have.

            “Oh!” Malfoy lashed his wand, and the nearest chair spun around and then seemed to dive down into itself, producing a stool with more legs than any Harry had ever seen. They would give it extra stability, he reckoned, and keep the stool from wobbling when he sat on it. Another swish and flick and murmured incantation, and Malfoy had covered the top with a thick-looking cushion. “Please sit down.”

            Harry did, and then looked at Malfoy. “What did you want to talk about first?”

            Malfoy hesitated. “Do you want me to touch your wing while we do this?”

            Harry smiled in spite of himself at the offer. “No,” he answered. “Sooner or later, we have to get past that. At least, if we’re going to matter more to each other than just Potions master and patient. So. Tell me why you enjoy Potions. That’s something that Snape never managed to make me understand, and you know I was no good at them in school.”

            “Except for sixth year,” Malfoy murmured, gaze heavy on him.

            Harry shrugged, which made the wings more uncomfortably, which was stupid, which required him to smooth them back again. Finally, they were settled, and he said, “I cheated.” If Malfoy resented that now, after all this time, that might be another sign that this wouldn’t work.

            But Malfoy only nodded, presumably because he had guessed that for himself, and then arranged his hands in front of him. “What Snape said about potions is essentially true. It’s an art you don’t use wands for. The magic comes from you, from your skill in putting together the combination of ingredients and your patience and your nerve and your cleverness…”

            Harry watched the streaks of firelight cross Malfoy’s intense eyes and bright hair, and watched his hands making long, lightning-shaped gestures through the air, like wings themselves, and relaxed a little. This could work, yeah.

*

            “I think it’s ready.”

            Harry hadn’t known that words spoken through a Floo connection could still make his breath catch and his heart pound fast enough to fill his vision with blasts of red and black. At least, not when they didn’t refer to Death Eaters. He opened his eyes and closed them, then nodded. “Right. Should I come to the lab?”

            “That would be acceptable,” Malfoy said, in that controlled murmur that Harry was growing used to, as though expressing actual emotion would drain Malfoy in some unspecified fashion. Harry started to nod and stand, but Malfoy interrupted with a faint cough. “Or you could come to my flat.”

            Harry blinked only once before he nodded again. “That’s…acceptable,” he said, and watched Malfoy’s lip curl slightly. “Fine. Do you have any appointments this afternoon, or can you meet right now?”

            “Would I have called you and told you the potion is ready if I had any other appointments?” Malfoy said.

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Excuse me for trying to be considerate.” Then there were the times that he was convinced nothing would ever work between him and Malfoy, and they were both doomed to dance around each other until they collapsed inwards like a star self-destructing.

            His wings ruffled out in front of him, and he pushed them irritably out of the way. “Should I come to your flat?” he repeated.

            Malfoy let another few moments beat past in tense silence before he nodded. Harry smiled at him as much as he could and waited until Malfoy’s face vanished from the fire before he left the office. He had stayed late anyway, trying to catch up on paperwork that had piled up while he was on holiday. No one would care if he left now.

            He listened to the wings rustling behind him as he walked down the corridor, meeting only a few other late Aurors who looked more interested in their files than in him. How would it feel to have them gone, now that he had made a few strides in accepting them?

            Wonderful.

            Harry nodded. He believed that Malfoy was telling the truth when he said that he found them beautiful, he accepted that, yeah, he himself probably didn’t have to go around constantly saying how ugly they were, but he would still be happier with them gone. He didn’t like the weight, he didn’t like the way the feathers crumpled and hurt, he didn’t like the way they prevented him from living a simple and normal life. If the scar had been like that, too, then he might have had time to get used to the consequences and wouldn’t think anything of not being able to sleep on his back. But that wasn’t the way he lived his life, and he wanted the way he lived his life back.

            With a few additions, of course.

*

            “How did you make the retraction potion?”

            Malfoy glanced back at him from where he was taking a vial off the fire with a pair of silver tongs. He wore a thick white robe that Harry didn’t know the purpose of, since it seemed likely that it would end up stained with flying drops of potion. Maybe he needed to stay warm when he was brewing and forgot to cast charms on himself, or maybe it interacted with the fumes rising from the potions somehow.

            “I used the feathers in a base which should make them curl up and retreat,” Malfoy replied, and set the vial down in the middle of a complicated little metal contraption that stood on silvery legs and looked as if it would hold several dozen vials. He tapped the glass with one finger and listened critically to its ring. “It was more complicated than that, of course, but I doubt you want to listen to me talk about Potions theory. You looked bored the other night.”

            “Try me.” Harry folded his arms and started to lean against the wall, but stopped when his wings unfolded behind him. He tried to conceal his sigh and the way he immediately wanted to smash them out of spite, for Malfoy’s sake if not his own.

            “All right,” Malfoy said, after a glance so long that Harry began to think he would refuse. “But, like I said, it’s really not all that interesting to someone who doesn’t already know the theory.”

            Harry shrugged, and remained standing.

            Malfoy couldn’t quite hide a smile as he nodded at the potion. “I theorized from the beginning that your pouches were different from the ones that held a normal phoenix’s wings. The magic that wound its way into your core created them to protect the wings, at least a little, against the fire and the power that you use to fly. Which means you were meant to fly, by the wings themselves,” he added as an aside, staring at Harry.

            “The wings don’t mean anything, they’re just body parts,” Harry said impatiently. “So how did you convince the feathers to curl up and disappear inside the pouches?”

            “Now who’s attributing meaning to the wings that they don’t really have?” Malfoy’s eyes shone with triumph for a moment before he looked back down “The pouches also protect the place where your wings join your body. Permanent changes or not, they don’t really have a natural template to work off. I knew it must look strange in there, not at all like the model of a normal bird’s wing.” He looked hard at Harry, as if he thought that he would seize on the words “strange” and “normal” and use them to talk about how much of a freak he was, again.

            Harry just smiled. Hearing Malfoy describe him as different from a bird was a good thing, for him, because it meant that Malfoy probably thought he was human. Probably.

            “So what did you do?” he asked.

            Malfoy frowned at the potion again. “It’s hard to describe this in terms that someone without the proper schooling would understand, but then, of course, I wouldn’t need to describe this at all if you had the proper schooling,” he muttered. He sighed when Harry gestured impatiently at him and rolled his eyes. “Simply said, the feathers themselves contain a clue to the pattern of structures that support the wings, if one knows how to read them. I can ‘read’ backwards from the feathers to the structures inside the pouches. That means I was able to reconstruct them, and to make them bend in my models. The potion contains instructions to your body to go backwards through the steps that it used when it was growing the wings, and pull them into the pouches.”

            Harry tilted his head. “Then why couldn’t you just go all the way backwards and have the wings vanish?”

            “Because I cannot make the pouches disappear,” Malfoy said. “And because of the changes to your core that we already discussed. The wings are part of you now. I could make a potion that would shrink an arm, but not one that would make your body forget that it should have two. The changes are that deep.”

            “In the genetic code, then,” Harry muttered. He wondered what would happen if he had children, but that was a question that would probably delay his taking of the potion by several hours. He put his hand out. “Can I have the potion now?”

            Malfoy handed it over, and stood there observing him.

            Harry toasted him with the vial, and tipped the sparking, blue-white liquid down his throat. For a moment, he thought it would be the first pleasant potion he had ever tasted, since it was cool and almost lemony, but then a thicker, more viscous taste caught up with that and he found himself trying to swallow what felt like wet socks. He grimaced and worked his way through it. The last thing he wanted to do was throw up all over Malfoy’s neat, white robe.

            He choked it down at last, and stood blinking at Malfoy for a few stupefied seconds before he felt the change begin.

            The wings shuddered. Harry could feel them bending, the bones becoming liquid, the feathers blending with one another as though they were swirling like a smeared painting. He glanced at them once, and then yanked his eyes away. It reminded him of the time he had seen Lupin transform, a process that was more sickening to watch than anything else.

            He bowed his head and breathed through an intense flash of heat that seemed to work its way through his body one nerve at a time. He had to bite his lip and clench his fists, but then the heat melted and began to fall away from him, and he was breathing more easily by the time he looked up.

            The first thing he noticed was the way Malfoy was staring at him, and the second thing he noted was the absence of weight and heat that he had almost grown used to. He reached up and groped for the feathers on his shoulders.

            They were gone.

            Harry leaned back against the wall, and nothing prevented him. He turned and leaped and pirouetted in place, and nothing dragged at him and prevented him from moving as fast as he wanted. He burst out laughing, and there was no warning crackle or droop from his back, the way that there would be if the wings felt that he was scolding them.

            He laughed, and went on laughing, falling to his knees and holding out his arms as if he would embrace the world.

            “Harry?”

            Malfoy’s voice, low and rough, brought him back from his celebration. Harry shook his hair out of his eyes and looked up, smiling. Malfoy stood facing him with one fist jammed in the pocket of his robe, as though he wanted to reach out to Harry or punch him and then had stopped himself.

            “Yeah?” Harry answered. He sat up and luxuriated in a stretch. He could lift his arms exactly the way he wanted to, and nothing stopped him. He whirled around on his knees, and jumped to his feet, and took a seat on one of the normal chairs. Just leaning against a high wooden back represented a luxury that he hadn’t thought it could. He let his head droop to the side and closed his eyes.

            “I—are you happy now?”

            Harry opened his eyes and reached back over his shoulders before he answered. He could feel the pouches sagging between his shoulder blades, along his spine. They seemed heavier and fuller than they had been the last time he touched them—but then, that had been the first day that he got the wings. He pressed down, and heard the crackle and felt the heat. Yes, the wings were in there, coiled up like snakes in burrows.

            “What happens if I want to take them back out?” he asked. “Do I have to drink another potion, or can I just decide that I want them and they’ll unfold?”

            Malfoy sneered at him, but the expression had no force behind it. Harry reckoned that watching Harry’s celebration had rather withered whatever secret hopes he might cherish that Harry enjoyed having the wings and would be dismayed with the results of the potion. “Is that not something you should have considered before you took the potion?” he murmured.

            “I know that you would have considered it, and you could tell me,” Harry answered, standing up and staring at Malfoy.

            Malfoy blinked as if that would never have occurred to him—and it probably wouldn’t have, Harry thought—and then looked away and sighed. “You can unfold them when you want to,” he said. “It will take some moments of concentration, and I wouldn’t advise trying to do it in the middle of a stressful situation such as a battle, because it would probably throw you to the ground. But you can do it.”

            “Thanks,” Harry said. He paused, but Malfoy wasn’t looking at him, which dashed Harry’s hope of conveying the message he wanted to with his eyes. He was going to have to say this aloud after all. “Malfoy, you’ve really done a lot for me, you know.”

            Malfoy grunted.

            “I appreciate it,” Harry said. “I know I was stubborn about admitting it—and there are still things I think you could have done better.” Malfoy hunched his shoulders, but at least that was a better response than unresisting blankness. Harry pushed on. “But you were the one who found out the truth and taught me that the wings didn’t make me ugly in everyone’s eyes.”

            Malfoy nodded.

            Harry coughed, and then waited until Malfoy looked at him, with such extreme reluctance Harry had to wonder if his plan would work after all. But then, it wasn’t a plan in the sense that he could predict exactly what would happen. He held out a hand, and Malfoy stared blankly at it.

            “Come on,” Harry coaxed softly. “I want to—you were brilliant the last time we slept with each other, and that was when I was under stress and you were probably trying to come up with ways to seduce the poor little Gryffindor. I wouldn’t mind sleeping with you again, if you want to show me what you can do when we both choose it.”

            Malfoy’s eyes snapped to his face. “You wanker,” he breathed.

            Harry just raised his eyebrows, and nodded. So Malfoy had recognized the test in Harry’s offer. If Malfoy really found him attractive without the wings, then he would still want to sleep with him when that they were hidden—later, if not now. If he had only been in it for the wings and didn’t find Harry beautiful now that they were gone, if he was just there to look at them first before Harry’s face or in the mirror, then he would walk away and Harry would do the same thing.

            The wings were a part of him. They were here to stay, as Harry could feel their weight in the pouches on his back when he shifted his balance. But they would never be the whole of him, and he wanted to make sure that Malfoy knew that.

            Malfoy wavered for long minutes. Harry knew why; he could read the man much better than he could have a few days ago, now that he was actually looking at him. He didn’t want to react to Harry’s test by just falling into his arms. He had his pride. He had been honest when he said that he was attracted to the wings, and now they were gone, and he had to look at just Harry, plain old Harry, whose most distinctive feature was his scar.

            But Malfoy would also be a fool to just turn his back on someone he wanted, who, for once, was making a true attempt to want him back. He had grown past the boy who would do things to spite everyone, including himself. He had the chance to go on challenging and making himself matter to someone who had mattered so much to him.

            Harry didn’t know how the contest would be decided. Everything seemed equally pitted against each other. Malfoy stood there, head bowed, eyes half-closed as he struggled with himself, and Harry waited, hand extended. It seemed appropriate to him that Malfoy was now the one who had to decide whether to refuse Harry’s hand or not.

            In the end, Malfoy reached out and clasped Harry’s wrist, fingers tight and hot as irons left in the fire.

            Harry smiled, and led the way.

*

            semaphore: Thank you! I don’t think they will ever get rid of that sometimes juvenile push-and-pull, but they’re getting to understand one another better.

            SP777: Thanks. I think this chapter more than makes up for the lack of drama in the last one.

            Talltree-san: Definitely! But he would have taken his leave if Draco had only been attracted to the wings.
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